According to a survey just published by the task force chosen by the Bishops’ Conference in England and Wales, the reading of “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown diminished “British citizens’ trust for the Catholic Church in a worrisome way”. The task force was meant to change the launch of the film into an evangelization opportunity. The film is showing in Britain from next Monday. The survey was carried out by “Opinion Research Business”. Over one thousand adults were interviewed. According to the survey, “after reading the book, there is double chance for the English to believe that Jesus Christ had children, and the readers themselves are four times more inclined to consider Opus Dei a sect committing murder”. The group of Catholic experts, coordinated by the press officer of Primate Murphy O’Connor, asked Sony that, at the beginning of the projection, the film should make clear that it is a fiction work. The book is hugely popular in Great Britain. Over one out of five adults has read it, and nearly one out of three is convinced that the Sion Monastery is a real medieval organization. 60 percent of the interviewed is persuaded that Jesus had children from Mary Magdalene. “A worrisome number of people are convinced that the contents of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ are real”, declared the press officer of Archbishop Austen Ivereigh. In the meantime, the Web page launched by the Catholic Church on the Internet, with information proving Dan Brown is wrong, is visited by about one thousand people every day.
